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Aviation History
1919
1919 - 0130.PDF
could desire. But against that we have the fact that the authorities appear to be playing fast and loose with the personnel of the R.A.F. We should like to ask the question whether any single officer of the Force, with the exception of those who initially joined the R.F.C. as " regulars " or those who came over to the R.N.A.S. from the Royal Navy, knows what the future holds for him if he takes a per manent commission ? We are given to understand that no fewer than three separate letters have been sent to officers during the past few weeks, asking them to make the Service their career, but in none of them has any definite statement been made as to the terms of their new engagement. Instead they are told in effect that " you cannot be guar anteed your present rank, or any particular rank, while it is possible that you will not receive pay and pension at the present rates." Now, it is perfectly clear that there are many officers serving in tem porary ranks who cannot be continued in the Service in those ranks. If they elect to remain onf they must be content to accept a grade lower, or sometimes even two steps lower, than the rank they have held during the closing phase of the War. Also, it is possible, though we do not see why at the moment, that financial considerations will render it impossible to continue the present rates of pay. For our own part, we should be very reluctant to interfere with the pay warrant of the R.A.F., for the reason that if the country wants the best possible officers it must make the S&viGe at least nearly as tempting as civil employment. If it decides that it cannot afford to pay for the best, then it will necessarily get only the second or third best, and the Service will be at a disadvantage as compared with the civil employer. But whatever decisions may be taken in this matter of rank and pay, they should surely be announced at once. The position now is that many good officers, who would like to remain in the R.A.F., are torn between the uncertainty of the future in the Service and the necessity of being early in the field for good positions in civil life. Many of them would willingly consent to sacrifice their temporary rank to remain, but they are not told what the Air Ministry has to offer them, and the Service is, therefore, in danger of losing large numbers of its best officers because the authorities are once more unable to make up their minds. This is really a deplorable state of things, and General Seely, who appears to be wholeheartedly in the movement for a powerful air service, might do a great deal worse than give this urgent matter his personal attention. To the officers who are hanging between two opinions we might offer the advice to defer decision for a few weeks longer until Parliament meets. Almost the first business that will come up for consideration is in connection with aerial matters, and it may be that the Air Ministry will take the opportunity of declaring its intentions and of asking for Parliamentary sanction. In any case, the matter is one of urgency, and should be settled at the earliest possible moment. • • • There are some things that are done British better in other countries than they to the are done here- 0n the other hand> War there are very many that are much better done by ourselves than by others, and, although the pose of the period is that of a dis belief in the ability of our own people to invent or inaugurate, the lessons of the War do not by any means bear out the justness of that attitude. We have, not altogether, we think, without a certain amount of reluctance, taken credit to ourselves for having made the greatest amount of progress in aviation and in aircraft design. As we have really screwed ourselves up to the claim, it is reasonably certain that the amount of progress made by our scientists and designers is much greater than is at present known to the man in the street. That.is really the case, and it is only by degrees that the well-kept secrets of the War are being allowed to partially leak out. For example, it has been thought by the uninitiated that it was America who gave us aerial wireless telephony, and that it was in America that it was perfected, and placed at the Allied disposal. Quite the contrary is the case, inasmuch as this was primarily a British discovery and was perfected through British research, though a good deal of assistance was given by France and America. It was in use in France before the end of 1917, and so highly was the secret prized that our pilots were given the most emphatic orders to at once destroy the apparatus in the event of their being compelled to make a forced landing behind the enemy's lines, and that the Germans never succeeded in fathoming the secret is earnest of the manner in which these orders were carried out. It is doubtful, however, if the apparatus would have told the enemy very much about the idea in any case. The range over which conversation can be conducted is about a dozen miles, and there is a case on record of one of our airship on patrol over the North Sea being informed by wireless telephone, at a distance of about ten miles, that 30 ft. of the upper keel had carried away and threatened disaster to the ship and crew. As it was, she was able to get back to her station in safety, thanks to wireless telephony. As to our manner of doing things better than some of the rest, the aeronautical correspondent of the Telegraph reminds us that the German certainly, for all their painstaking thoroughness, had a habit of falling short in a number of ways. For instance, as he records, the Junker two-seater " trench-strafer " had two machine guns pointing straight down through the bottom of the fuselage. The natural effect of this was that its fire was rendered almost totally ineffective. Any sensible designer would obviously mount the guns to fire almost in the line of flight, in order to bring to bear a raking fire down a trench or along a body of troops or line of transport. We did not fall into that error, whatever else we may have done wrongly. This may in itself be quite a minor matter, but it is indicative of the fact that not all the mistakes were on our side. As a matter of fact, we have little to be ashamed of in the matter of enterprise and discovery, and much that should induce a feeling of pride in the resource and inventiveness of our own people. We are accustomed to talk of ourselves as though we were the prize fools of the earth, and there is very little doubt that the Germans took us at our own apparent valuation, which, on the whole, was perhaps not a bad thing as matters turned out. They probably know better now, and so, we imagine, do others. The veil of self-deprecia tion has been torn asunder, and the world ha! dis covered that the British Empire is still in the forefront of scientific research and adaptability to sudden circumstances. 130
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